Pirates

I was watching TV last night and a Captain Morgan commercial came on (the one where the good cap'n is sitting at a dinner table with a bunch of 18th century bores) and I thought, you know, I need to have a pirate character in a book. Or a book about pirates. Naturally, that lead to the problem of how to bring pirates into urban fantasy. I'm sure there's a way to get the two together. Maybe just have a dashing, hard-living, devil-may-care, slightly legally-challenged hero who happens to own a boat. And then what ...?

I don't think I've ever even read a pirate story, though I've watched plenty of pirates in movies. Of course, Johnny Depp comes to mind, along with the debonair, swashbuckling Errol Flynn, and my personal favorite, a youthful Tommy Lee Jones as Bully Hayes in 1983's Nate and Hayes. Then again, I'm a diehard TLJ fan, craggy face and all. But I digress...

I think this is a subject worth pondering. Maybe I'll make a list of things that remind me of pirates and find a way to weave them into a character. I'm sure all this sudden obsession with pirates is at least partially the result of the calendar. For those who may not know, February in Tampa is pirate season. That's when we begin our annual month-long siege by the dastardly Jose Gaspar and his many ribald krewes. You can't throw a rock in South Tampa this time of year without hitting a pirate or a pirate flag. And why not? Pirates stand for everything that means fun to an adult--hard partying, carefree, and irresponsible.

Yep, I'm seeing a pirate story in my future.